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"Okavango" (Part 2): 15-minute video that shares the passage of the expedition through the central wilderness of the Okavango Delta (Botswana). Watch from 8 minutes to see a heart-stopping interaction with a monster 5-metre Nile crocodile...

50/50 (Human/Nature) SABC2 (Producer: Zach Vincent)

“How do you describe this place to people that have never been into the central wilderness of the Okavango Delta? How do you share the overwhelming feeling of alertness and vitality brought on by the realisation that you are surrounded by animals that far more powerful than you are? Faster, stronger, more agile and, of course, wilder. They are the masters of their own sunrise and the lords of the dark nights after sunset. We all feel inspired by this wilderness and feel like refugees in this wild, primordial place we could never live in permanently. This is the undisputed kingdom of the lion, elephant, hippo, crocodile, leopard, buffalo, python and honey badger. Every meter that we pole in our mokoros and every step we take on land has to be done mindfully with care and respect for a landscape that is older than us and owned by no one but those who live in it. Stepping into a living, breathing wild landscape helps us understand our place in this living planet, makes us feel what it is to be truly human. For the first time you feel the deep weakness and insecurity that made us what we are today. We have so much to learn from these last-remaining untamed and unmanaged places on earth. These landscapes and the wildlife that depend upon them have been around for millions of years and are connected to eternity by the slow, unbroken passage of time. Life that fits into the universal pace of natural selection, evolution, random chance, and creativity. All will be gone in the next few decades due to our activity and the cataclysmic damage we have done already.”

The human experience in this wilderness is nothing short of exhilarating and life-giving, showing us our path to a better future. (Paul Steyn)

Part 2 of “Okavango” is a unique view into the daily goings-on while on expedition across the Okavango Delta. A must-watch for anyone who loves the wilderness… All who participate in our research expeditions are driven to their physical and mental limit by being lost half the time, fatigued and starved all the time, over-stimulated, burnt by the sun, drained by the humidity, mentally tired from the constant data recording, and driven on by nervous energy. All of us have engineered our lives around being able to do these expedition every year and could not imagine a reason that would keep us from this life-giving wilderness.

The crystal clear waters of the Okavango Delta. We were very happy to find this shallow, sandy channel just to the north of Chief’s Island after 7 days of hardship in no-man’s land… (Paul Steyn)

Go to intotheokavango.org for a real-life, LIVE view into our world on expedition. These stunning satellite images and our GPS paths across them make it clear just how hard it is to navigate your way across this patchwork mosaic of channels, floodplains, lagoons, papyrus, reedbeds, tree-lines, termite mounds, sand tongues and over 10,000 islands. Reading the flow of the water, predicting where the dangerous animals like hippos are going to be, spotting danger before trouble, watching ripples, wind direction, aquatic vegetation, slight changes in flow, plant matter in the water, birds along the edges, everything. A clear, alert mind for the first time is a euphoric experience. Being, for want of better word, linked into this truly wild landscape with all of your consciousness is to be at peace and want for nothing.

A view from the live representation of the 2013 Okavango Expedition that was updated every 20 minutes and shared all research data every day. (Wild Bird Trust / Office for Creative Research)

The Okavango Wetland Bird Survey represents the most complete data set on the distribution, abundance and breeding activity of wetland birds in the Okavango Delta. Each annual data set includes 2,700 – 5,000 bird sightings over a 320-350km transect line with wetland habitat mapped and identified either side of the transect line. We count wildlife, aquatic vegetation and fish sightings. This 9-year project is an effort to “benchmark” this amazing wilderness as it is now without significant impacts upstream. This annual survey will be repeated for as long as possible after the 9th expedition in 2018 and the annual results (made available via an Open API) represent our best chance at noticing significant changes to the natural functioning of the Okavango Delta. In 2015, we aim to start amphibian surveys in December to establish a long-term data set on their distribution and abundance for use as a more fine-tuned indicator of significant change. I talk about some if this in this video…

By Day 4 we knew that everyone on the expedition was going to need to learn how to pole. There was just no enough water… (Paul Steyn)

Comments

David Anderton

Cross Hills, Yorkshie, UK BD20 7DJ

January 13, 2014, 3:50 pm

Recently my wife and I visited the the Okavango we felt happy and at home there.
This is my response to a place I have wished to visit for more than sixty years. A magical place we must help to preserve and we must give as much as we can to help Botswana and it’s people, in such a way that the wilderness is preserved for ALL our grandchildren so they too can walk there AND KNOW such an abundance of wildlife.
I am not sure how to do this, but the local people must be intimately involved so that the can believe that it is theirs and not the domain of privileged Europeans and American. It must belong to them and be of value to them.

Bless the Okavango for ever.

David Anderton

Pete

Cape Town

January 10, 2014, 3:45 pm

Do you know of anyone who has not loved the Okavango????
Must be one of the if not the most awesome lace on earth.

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The mission of the Okavango Wilderness Project is to secure the Okavango Delta and its vast untouched catchment in perpetuity. The National Geographic film Okavango is a rallying point for the global community of stakeholders, government officials, researchers, activists, tourism operators, community members, conservationists and guides that support the protection of the Angolan catchment. Readers can help build up to our 8-week expedition over 1,000 miles down the length of the Okavango River in 2015 by sharing this epic, once-in-a-lifetime research and conservation expedition down the full length of the Okavango River through an abandoned wilderness into the Delta. -- Steve Boyes.

Steve Boyes: Reviving the Heart of Wild Africa

Born and raised in South Africa, National Geographic Emerging Explorer Steve Boyes has dedicated his life to restoring and preserving Africa's wilderness areas and the species that call them home. In this National Geographic Live! presentation Boyes talks about his experiences in the Okavango and his dreams for protecting its wilderness for generations to come.

Okavango Delta Traverse (August 2014)

For the first time ever a group of National Geographic explorers will be sharing their every move, their research, what they are seeing, what they are hearing, their very heartbeats, and their thoughts and tweets in real-time via satellite while exploring one of the world’s richest wilderness areas, Botswana’s Okavango Delta. This team of baYei River Bushmen, scientists, data artists, writers, photographers, bloggers, naturalists and conservation engineers will be taking the very pulse of Africa’s last-remaining wetland wilderness. This ground-breaking expedition launches on the 17th August and will most likely finish on the 3rd September… Join us and meet the expedition team at intotheokavango.org.

Okavango Feature Film

Okavango will be a National Geographic feature-length film that shares an intimate look at the human experience in wilderness: The ups and downs, the vulnerability and humility, the care and caution, the love, the fear, the frustration, the surrender and dependence on water.

The team of explorers plan to undertake a two-month crossing of the Okavango River system from the source in Angola all the way 1,000 miles down the river through Namibia’s Caprivi Strip and into an untouched wilderness in the heart of the Okavango Delta in Botswana. They will travel like baYei River Bushmen and be subject to the dangers of encountering the worlds largest-remaining populations of elephants, thousands of hippos, 15–foot crocodiles, and some of the last–remaining super–prides of lions on Earth.

Into the Okavango

Follow the Okavango expedition via data uploaded daily to satellite by the team in the Delta. Data is also available through a public API, allowing anyone to re-mix, analyze, or visualize the collected information.

2013 Expedition

Click the image to read the blog posts from the 2013 Expedition to the Okavango.